INSTABILITY

INSTABILITY

By Van Nguyen

     The fight for powers by underhand means between top leaders in the Politburo persisted in secret. It became increasingly tense at the outset of the Congress of the People’s Army of October 13, 1986. The prestige of General Vo Nguyen Giap, the hero of Dien Bien Phu victory and his two close colleagues, General Chu Huy Man, commander-in-chief of the People’s Army and General Van Tien Dung, the general commander of Ho Chi Minh Campaign in the spring of 1975, was immersed in disfavor. Political maneuvers closed in on the military leaders after the doubtful deaths of three other outstanding generals, Hoang Van Thai, Le Trong Tan, and Dinh Duc Thien. Out of a hidden scheme instigated by Le Duc Tho, top leaders in the Politburo, Pham Van Dong, Pham Hung, and Vo Chi Cong, Party Secretary-general Truong Cinhh was forced to resign from position. 

     In the opening session of the internal Congress of the Communist Party on December 15, 1986, Nguyen Van Linh, the Committee Party secretary of Ho Chi Minh City was chosen Party Secretary-general for renovation by a unanimous vote. With the ascension of Nguyen Van Linh to powers, the Communist Party of Vietnam hastened a move from command economy to market economy.  As a consequence of burning failures of successive economic reforms for a decade-long People’s democracy, instability in the economic, social, and political life were still very much with the people of Vietnam, however.

 The Peasantry in the North

 In Thai Binh Province, well-known “the granary of rice North Vietnam,” people still labored under “doi moi” (renovation). There was no change in the life of the peasantry.  A three-generation family still lived under the same ancestral thatched-roof cottage. They had no other means for production but bare hands and rudimentary farm implements. Agricultural communes and cooperatives were dissolved, but everything was under the control of the commune.

Previously, under the agricultural communes and cooperatives system, the peasants worked for the agricultural cooperative and were paid for the labor they contributed to it. In principle, the better you contribute to it, the more interest you get from it. Contrarily, the peasants, in reality, were cleaned out shamelessly. A cooperative farmhand was given only 6 kilograms of rice over a month, nothing else but rice. He had no sick-leave. If he wanted a day off, a portion of his rice ration would be taken off. If he was absent from work, he would be interrogated and punished. His rice ration could be cut on charge absence from work without a reason. He committed the serious crime of sabotage against the policy for socialist production. The peasant labored as ever. He worked twelve months a year including communal works such as digging canals and damming a river. He was nevertheless paid for eight and a half months. The compensation was meager. A cooperative farm hand could only have nearly 50 kilogram s of rice for the whole six-month rice season. In times of drought and flood, the peasant went hungry without a doubt.

Renovation came but brought about even more evils. Taxes and fees accumulated. Peasants in the agricultural provinces like Thai Binh lived in penury. Crops yield could only afford even for three or four months yearly. Parents left homes for townships and cities to work on hire. Kids stayed home and took care of family matters. Misery plagued the countryside.  In the winter, kids didn’t even have shorts to resist the bitter cold. Every time, a visitor from the South came back to the home village, he or she usually brought with him or her bundles of old clothes collected from relatives and friends in the South and gave them to those poor children. An old piece of clothes was then worth several kilograms of rice. (Interview with Nguyen Thi Diep. VHRW. Novembe992)

    

In the beginning, the peasant seems to rejoice at the new policy, but he soon realizes that he is exploited even more cruelly than he had been. He is now reluctant and feels disheartened, being aware of the reality that he has to face new difficulties. As ever, the right to private ownership is a taboo subject. Land is state-administered. The peasant could rent it on contract. A family of 6 members, for example, could rent 7 “sao” (700m2). Under this new contract system, the peasant stands on his own, cultivating his fields and taking care of his crop. On the average, in a good season, a peasant cultivating 7 “sao” (700m2) can earn get 420 kilograms of rice. Under the commune cooperatives system, he is given 240 kilograms of rice. Under the new system, he can get the double amount. But, the situation isn't better. The peasant has to pay for everything, from seeds to manure. Before renovation, he works for the cooperative; he can be afforded commodities on state subsidies. Now, he has to buy them on market prices, which are often ten times higher. Before renovation, schooling for children was tuition-free. He doesn't even know if he will ever be courageous enough to continue working on the fields. Many peasants can't afford their children's tuition fees, which often cost almost all the crop of the family. They keep them home to work for the family. They need to survive first.

   Renovation depicts another somber picture. Begging in 1988, the agricultural cooperatives system was abolished as the first move towards the market economy.  A good story tells, as he believes that good times have come, a college student majoring in agriculture drops out of school, nurturing the idea that he possibly takes advantage of the new system to make good money. He goes back to his home village asking his parents to borrow money from relatives for him to rent a tractor. He hopes that once he has had the plough-machine at hand, every peasant in the region will ask him to plough the field—just for the sake of convenience. That will save time, labor, and money for the laborer. He will be there to gather money. To his distress, the peasants can’t afford to hire him. They are penniless. Moreover, they are accustomed to rudimentary mode of production. They still miserably depend on buffalo-drawn harrows and ploughs, and hand farming implements for cultivation.  (Thien Nhan, VNHRW, 7 (March 1992)).     

The Peasantry in the Center

 A peasant in Mo Duc District, Quang Ngai Province, told how he survived before and after the new agrarian reform: “After1986, the agricultural cooperatives system is abolished. Misery is still pervasive. The peasants and common people are in the same boat: They are equally miserable. The absolute majority of the people in his district are peasants. Before 1986, they worked for the agricultural commune but could not afford foods for their families. Three-fourths of the crop yield went to the state--practically local cadres and authorities. After 1986, the situation isn’t better. Adopting the path of market economy, the local authorities allocated 800 square meters of land to everyone who was 18 years old and older. On the average, the crop yield--the peasants usually grow rice--per rice season varied from 60 to 80 kgs per 800 square meters. Subtracting the expenses for the care of the land, there was only half of the crop yield left. The peasants nevertheless had to pay for all kinds of additional state contributions, from social relief services to military obligations --not to mention the tuition fees for their children. In addition, they had “the right" to pay the rent for the land they were allocated and taxes to the State. There was virtually nothing left after they had done all their "citizens' obligations"—from national defense to social welfare fees contributions.  

Propaganda is always instrumental to the policy of the State’. The Vietnamese people know that the Vietnamese Communist Party lies to them. It says the people are the "master of the country" but, in reality, they are only the slaves. They are like old and weak buffaloes laboring for the benefits of the state cadres and Communist party members. The people are "the master of the country" but the State is the true organizer that administers their lives and properties. The Vietnamese Communist Party is the true master who reserves the rights to the "leadership" of the people! Those plain lies camouflage hidden schemes that are contrary to reason and common sense. (Van Chuong, Interview with Dinh Phu: 11 VNHRW (July 1993)).

Warnings and threats are used as a means to an end to control not only the people but also party members and officials in the officialdom. They serve as the shields to cover up errors and mistakes. State policies are right, only the executors are at fault. To execute political intimidation, the Communist administration activates campaigns of propaganda to rectify their cadres' faux pas and corrupt practices. Those campaigns, in reality, are aimed not only to eliminate corrupt officials but also to monitor opposition from the masses to abort it right in the germinal stage. The repressive operations in the Center are a case in evidence. While the campaigns went on secretly in the provinces of Phu Khanh and Binh Tri Thien, they are carried out with hard measures in Thanh Hoa Province. Having failed to intimidate the peasants in the village of Ngoc Tho, district of Trieu Son, the local authorities suppressed with violence the villagers' opposition. Thirty district and province security policemen, armed with submachine guns and flanked by police-dogs, were given orders to assault the unarmed villagers (Thien Chuong, VNHRW: 1992: 4).

The Peasantry in the Mekong Delta

The demonstrations by the peasantry took place in many places in the provinces of the Mekong Delta during 1987-1988. The incidents were unknown to the West due to State mass media censorship   and the "Internal policy."  The developments were confirmed by well-informed sources in Ho Chi Minh City--high-ranking officials on mission in Paris and refugees from the provinces concerned. The first demonstration occurred at Mo Cay, a district in the province of Ben Tre, a hundred kilometers south of Ho Chi Minh City. The district was well-known for its “Dong Khoi” (general uprising) on December 20, 1960, the date that well marked the precursory step toward "the War for the Liberation of South Vietnam." Two other demonstrations, also organized by the peasantry, took place after that, in April and May 1988. The second demonstration was directed by veteran fighters of the Front for Liberation of South Vietnam, and it was the bloodiest one. Armed with hatches, knives, and hoes, the protesters occupied the fields of the commune cooperatives. Their demands were the return of their private properties, direct evaluation of land policies, and the lowering of taxation on farming. Police forces were sent in to repress the demonstrations. Many peasants were seriously wounded. Among them was Ho Sinh, a veteran cadre, who was incarcerated later. 

The peasantry also organized two demonstrations in Ho Chi Minacity, which occurred on August 12, 1988 and November 9-10. 1988. According to the AFP, approximately 1.000 people participated in the protest. Hanoi had to satisfy some demands. Each cooperative member was then allocated a piece of land for his own use. One might think that would be a signal for the return to the old mode of individual land production in the South as previously. However, the land ever belongs to “the people” as prescribed by the constitutional law (Article 17 of the 1992 Constitution). The agrarian taxation is lowered. The lease term, according to the law on land, passed by the National Assembly on July 15, 1993, is fixed for 20 years for the rice-field and 50 years for the land used for multiphase growing. The lease is restorable. Each household has the right to exploit three hectares of rice-field at most. These half-way measures, however, did not satisfy the peasantry's legitimate demands. They wish to be given back the rights to private ownership and direct evaluation of the land.  

The provision 17 of 1992 Constitution and the new law on land, in truth, dispossess the ownership of private property circumscribed by a lease.  Someday it will be manipulated by the government for certain some reason, transforming the peasants into the true "State farmers." Deprived of his land legally and only allowed by the government for cultivation, the peasant and his family only survive at the mercy of the State. They suffer almost the same fate as their peers in the North did during the bloody agrarian reforms in 1955-1956. Even though lowered, the taxation remained high. The yield of crops was not sufficient enough to relieve them from making ends meet due to heavy costs of farming. Worse still, despite good harvests, quite a few peasants went bankrupt because the selling price of rice in the market (averaging from 750 dong per kilogram (with one dollar equals 10,000 dong) was still low. It is equal to or lowers than the cost of production. The peasant was no longer interested in implementing the yield of land simply the land did not belong to him. The limit of three hectares per household discouraged the old middle-category cultivators who had possessed more than three hectares. As a consequence, in the Mekong Delta where the population was sparse and labor force was in want, the peasants abandoned farming. (Lam Thanh Liem 1993, 4-5)